Drama and Reality

First published in 1972, Drama and Reality is a lucid account of the forces that have shaped modern European theatre, and especially of the different conceptions of reality implied in different plays. Three major views are distinguished (the naturalistic, the subjective, the religious) and related to the choice between poetic and representational form in drama. In the second part of the book, Ronald Gaskell takes a number of plays which offer a distinctive vision—a personal modification of one of the views of the world already discussed—and shows how the form of each play expresses and defines this personal vision.